Blogging Tips

WordPress is probably the most widely used blogging platform available today. It’s loaded with tons of features, widgets, plugins, and it’s extremely versatile and customizable. Most bloggers will agree that WordPress is simply the best.

Today, I want to share with you how you can use WordPress as an inspirational tool for your creative writing.

Most of us generally choose a theme related to the type of blog we write on a daily basis. Some bloggers choose magazine themes so a lot of content is readily accessible from the front page, some choose simpler themes, or themes that already have ad space in place. The theme of a blog represents the scope and nature of the material within.

If you have a creative side, whether serious or simply for fun, you can also choose themes that reflect the nature of that side of writing. If you share this with readers, it will give them a feel for the story and it can also stimulate your creative side on days you seem to be less than enthusiastic about writing, or it can also help with the dreaded writer’s block.

One of the nice things about using WordPress this way; it can be set to private to ensure that your work isn’t seen unless you want it to be or until you’re ready to share it with the world. You can simply use it for your muse’s playground and inspiration.

If you do decide to share it with readers, it’s a really nice touch to have a blog theme that is visually appealing and helps create the mood for the story.

Another great aspect for using WP as a creative tool is the use of categories. We know that using categories is a great way to help organize work, but it’s also a great way to organize characters and other key elements in a story.

For instance, if you write something about one of your characters and later need quick access to the material, you can simply click on his/her name that’s been set up as a category and find all the material you’ve written on the character.

My “works of art” are still in the creation stage. I have 5 WordPress blogs set up for various stories/novels that I work on. I’d like to share 2 of them to give you an idea of how using a theme can be visually inspiring.

For my Short Stories, I chose a girly, stationary type theme. It’s set to show only the latest post on the main page. I believe this theme looks best without having to scroll on the first page. For the other stories I have there, I simply used the “Recent Posts” widget and changed its name to “The Stories.” I’ve also set the “Categories” widget to contain 3 categories; Short Story, Flash Fiction, Writing Prompt.

For Summer Breeze, I chose a theme that’s laid back, light and summery. This story will have a mystery wrapped in it, but for the overall feel of the story I wanted to suggest “light romantic”, so I found a theme that appealed to me in that fashion.

My others consist of a medieval tale, a vampire story and a modern day ranch. For each of those, I chose themes that appealed to my creative muse for those genres. There’s so many WP themes available that it’s hard not to find something, and it’s even harder to decide which theme to use.

I’m also a WordPress theme fanatic. Working on fiction by using WP themes this way works out wonderfully for me and my obsession.

Is there a way you use WordPress for something other than traditional blogging? We’d love to hear from you.